8 ms·

Speech is considered violence by some people. It has been this way since the late 80's but it was confined to certain subcultures that weren't taken too serious

Speech is considered violence by some people. It has been this way since the late 80's but it was confined to certain subcultures that weren't taken too seriously. But they have taken over certain institutions, like the university (and increasingly big-tech), and own that platform and teach this as esteemed fact rather than an opinion. And it's dangerous because when you equate speech with violence then how far are we from responding with a so called violent act with actual violence? One thing they've gotten right is that discourses (how we talk about things) does in fact have a lot of power. So controlling discourses means you consolidate power. When you control how we talk about things then you can control what we talk about. When you control that, then you control how people think about things and you've now successfully won the culture and therefore seized actual, real power. Like being able to use a small minority of corporate activists to pressure a company into viewing certain content as violent or "problematic" and other content as orthodox and therefore appropriate to "platform". This is how the church worked in the West for years, how it still does in certain places (Saudi Arabia) - by using dogma to determine what is right and wrong. To become the sole arbiter on what is knowledge and what is blasphemy and therefore the authority to discipline and punish. This is where we are.

nostromo 6y ago
> But they have taken over certain institutions, like the university (and increasingly big-tech) And the media, which is increasingly opposed to free speech. Today we're seeing journalists talk about how other journalists should be banned from the public square by powerful corporations. They seemingly aren't bright enough to pause and wonder if this will ever be used against them. And this is being done under the banner of progressivism. There are so many layers of irony here.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  > And this is being done under the banner of progressivism I think it's a very confusing time. A lot of people want to be "good people". They don't understand how the definitions of words have changed and what they're really signing up for. "Anti-racisim" sounds great - what reasonable, moral person wants to be racist? But you begin to read the text and you start to see it isn't what you think it is. That it isn't anything like what we've been working towards in terms of civil rights and equality. I don't think "Progressivism" is the right word. There's not a good name for this philosophy yet other than derogative terms like "woke". Social Justice maybe but I find it unjust. I've seen "therapeutic totalitarianism" as one candidate.
  - themgt 6y ago
    Bari Weiss wrote in Tablet yesterday (before this current hullaballoo had begun) about this[1]. I think "successor ideology" is an apt if awkward stand-in term, because it focuses on the project as an attempt to ideologically present "the next stage" or replacement for liberalism: No one has yet decided on the name for the force that has come to unseat liberalism. Some say it’s “Social Justice.” The author Rod Dreher has called it “therapeutic totalitarianism.” The writer Wesley Yang refers to it as “the successor ideology” — as in, the successor to liberalism. At some point, it will have a formal name, one that properly describes its mixture of postmodernism, postcolonialism, identity politics, neo-Marxism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and the therapeutic mentality. Until then, it is up to each of us to see it plainly. We need to look past the hashtags and slogans and the jargon to assess it honestly — and then to explain it to others. The new creed’s premise goes something like this: We are in a war in which the forces of justice and progress are arrayed against the forces of backwardness and oppression. And in a war, the normal rules of the game — due process; political compromise; the presumption of innocence; free speech; even reason itself — must be suspended. Indeed, those rules themselves were corrupt to begin with — designed, as they were, by dead white males in order to uphold their own power. [1] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/stop-being-shocked https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/stop-being-...
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      Good read and I agree. She is so right and it’s sad she was chased out of the NYT.
      - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
        Chased out through this very same mechanism even.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      Weiss is, if anything, less genuine than Twitter execs on this issue. https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-falsely-denies-her-years-of-attacks-on-the-academic-freedom-of-arab-scholars-who-criticize-israel/ https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals...
- StanislavPetrov 6y ago
  >Today we're seeing journalists talk about how other journalists should be banned from the public square by powerful corporations. They seemingly aren't bright enough to pause and wonder if this will ever be used against them. One of the issues is calling media personalities who read from teleprompters, "journalists". Call them actors, call them media spokespeople, but they aren't engaging in anything that can be construed as, "journalism". Further, it isn't in the interest of corporate media outlets to hire people who are smart. They want people who sound articulate, look good on camera and repeat the talking points that they are told to repeat. What we see on cable outlets these days shouldn't be considered, "news" so much as infotainment. By now, most people, regardless of their political affiliation (if any) understand that society has largely gone off the rails, and in their desperation they are left with an appeal to authority to make things better and restore a patina of "normality". It is dangerously seductive to suggest to people who are desperate to end the chaos that if we just silenced the "bad" people things would be okay (leaving unsaid who determines who is bad and what we are allowed to think and say).
  - nostromo 6y ago
    I'm not talking about cable news anchors, I'm talking about the New York Times, which is defending Twitter and Facebook censoring the Post.
    - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
      It's really kind of mind boggling really. Does the Times not think they will ever fall afoul of the goodthink, and this weapon will never be used against them?
8note 6y ago
Conspiracy became illegal in the 80s? Threatening people? That seems recent
joe_the_user 6y ago
Speech is considered violence by some people. Some people consider a lot of speech violence but nearly everyone considers a small amount of speech violence or some equivalent. Telling someone to grab a electrified wire is violence by nearly everyone's standard. A mafioso directing a hit man to kill is nearly everyone's standard. The famous "shouting fire in a crowded theater" is mostly violence etc. So you can't say the situation is "free speech or not". The situation is always where the boundary is. Of course, the question of where quickly spreading slander on the eve of an elections is on the spectrum of protected speech is a complicated question. But it's a bit different than the question of whether a given dogma can be challenged.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  Right when there is a clear and imminent danger has been the judicial limit on speech. I think nearly everyone finds this reasonable. To my point though there is the idea that “silence is violence” which implies if you don’t actively work towards a certain groups objective then you are in fact committing violence. Does this mean that when their social revolution is complete I will hang from the gallows pole because my named social media accounts do not account for me actively promoting their cause? After all my silence on the matter was a hostile act. Maybe I’ll just get a struggle session and be re-educated. Lifelong ban from participating in society but alive at least. If I’m lucky.
  - thisiscorrect 6y ago
    "Does this mean that when their social revolution is complete I will hang from the gallows pole because my named social media accounts do not account for me actively promoting their cause?" Yes, it does mean that. They're saying so explicitly.
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      And I think it’s important to highlight as you have. People will say “well they don’t really _mean_ that”, etc. but they should be taken at their word. They do.
montagg 6y ago
There is absolutely speech that is violence, and it is typically not protected by free speech. Harassment, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, calling for literal violence against others, these are allowed to be regulated (in the US) and understood broadly to be dangerous.
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  No, speech is not violence, full stop. It never has been, and it’s a mistake to even tolerate this new definition. Think about it. How can calling for violence be violence? The violence is the violence, the calling for it is incitement. Redefining terms like this is nothing more than subverting the truth to control a narrative.
  - montagg 6y ago
    Then you're going against a hundred years of legal thought on free speech there. There's a reason certain speech is not protected, and it's been hashed out. if you have a better legal argument than "it's just not," I'm interested, but it needs to address why previous thinking is incorrect. Edit: a [quick link][1] to all the types of speech in the US that is regulated and why. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United_States#Types_of_speech_restrictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...
    - sethammons 6y ago
      Searched for 'violence' and derivative forms in that wiki link: > limitations on free speech balance rights to free speech and other rights, such as rights for ... protection from imminent or potential violence against particular persons. The speech is not violent. However, we can say that speech that promotes such might not be allowed under "free speech." Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is not violent though it can cause people to panic and cause harm.
    - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
      What does this have to do with what I said? Why do you think I said anything about what is protected? We are arguing about the definition of the word violence.
stolen_biscuit 6y ago
> Speech is considered violence by some people. It has been this way since the late 80's but it was confined to certain subcultures that weren't taken too seriously. But they have taken over certain institutions, like the university (and increasingly big-tech), and own that platform and teach this as esteemed fact rather than an opinion. Who is they?
- nemo44x 6y ago
  Fair question. The radical left as some name them. But more specifically the activist culture motivated by “critical theory” to dismantle scientific-liberalism and enlightenment principals/philosophy.
  - stolen_biscuit 6y ago
    Just to clarify you believe the radical left have infiltrated the upper echelons of capitalist society and academic institutions and have an anti free-speech agenda and have a goal of dismantling enlightenment principals? Can you also explain what you mean by scientific liberalism?
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      “A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. This means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism; it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will.” - Johnathon Rausch 1) no one owns the blessings of what is knowledge by virtue of any sort of implied authority. 2) all accepted knowledge is open to revision upon new evidence or proof This is a good read that articulates this more than I can. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/703086.Kindly_Inquisitors# https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/703086.Kindly_Inquisitor...
    - john_moscow 6y ago
      I think some people have an inherent need to gain influence. To have power over others, tell them what to do. Due to monopolization and centralization, there are fewer and fewer spots to do it in a constructive way (found your own company?). Except if you claim that you're offended, you're suddenly given the right to control what others say. If you claim that you are fighting racism/sexism/etc, you're shielded from 90% of critique. So this "safe haven" has attracted all kinds of opportunists that just enjoy attacking others to feel better about themselves. Look at your typical BLM protestors. It's not Black doctors protesting against being treated differently from White doctors. It's unhappy people from both races that have found an uncriticizable cause to justify their own disappointment in life.

nostromo 6y ago

> But they have taken over certain institutions, like the university (and increasingly big-tech) And the media, which is increasingly opposed to free speech. Today we're seeing journalists talk about how other journalists should be banned from the public square by powerful corporations. They seemingly aren't bright enough to pause and wonder if this will ever be used against them. And this is being done under the banner of progressivism. There are so many layers of irony here.

nemo44x 6y ago
> And this is being done under the banner of progressivism I think it's a very confusing time. A lot of people want to be "good people". They don't understand how the definitions of words have changed and what they're really signing up for. "Anti-racisim" sounds great - what reasonable, moral person wants to be racist? But you begin to read the text and you start to see it isn't what you think it is. That it isn't anything like what we've been working towards in terms of civil rights and equality. I don't think "Progressivism" is the right word. There's not a good name for this philosophy yet other than derogative terms like "woke". Social Justice maybe but I find it unjust. I've seen "therapeutic totalitarianism" as one candidate.
- themgt 6y ago
  Bari Weiss wrote in Tablet yesterday (before this current hullaballoo had begun) about this[1]. I think "successor ideology" is an apt if awkward stand-in term, because it focuses on the project as an attempt to ideologically present "the next stage" or replacement for liberalism: No one has yet decided on the name for the force that has come to unseat liberalism. Some say it’s “Social Justice.” The author Rod Dreher has called it “therapeutic totalitarianism.” The writer Wesley Yang refers to it as “the successor ideology” — as in, the successor to liberalism. At some point, it will have a formal name, one that properly describes its mixture of postmodernism, postcolonialism, identity politics, neo-Marxism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and the therapeutic mentality. Until then, it is up to each of us to see it plainly. We need to look past the hashtags and slogans and the jargon to assess it honestly — and then to explain it to others. The new creed’s premise goes something like this: We are in a war in which the forces of justice and progress are arrayed against the forces of backwardness and oppression. And in a war, the normal rules of the game — due process; political compromise; the presumption of innocence; free speech; even reason itself — must be suspended. Indeed, those rules themselves were corrupt to begin with — designed, as they were, by dead white males in order to uphold their own power. [1] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/stop-being-shocked https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/stop-being-...
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    Good read and I agree. She is so right and it’s sad she was chased out of the NYT.
    - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
      Chased out through this very same mechanism even.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Weiss is, if anything, less genuine than Twitter execs on this issue. https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-falsely-denies-her-years-of-attacks-on-the-academic-freedom-of-arab-scholars-who-criticize-israel/ https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals...
StanislavPetrov 6y ago
>Today we're seeing journalists talk about how other journalists should be banned from the public square by powerful corporations. They seemingly aren't bright enough to pause and wonder if this will ever be used against them. One of the issues is calling media personalities who read from teleprompters, "journalists". Call them actors, call them media spokespeople, but they aren't engaging in anything that can be construed as, "journalism". Further, it isn't in the interest of corporate media outlets to hire people who are smart. They want people who sound articulate, look good on camera and repeat the talking points that they are told to repeat. What we see on cable outlets these days shouldn't be considered, "news" so much as infotainment. By now, most people, regardless of their political affiliation (if any) understand that society has largely gone off the rails, and in their desperation they are left with an appeal to authority to make things better and restore a patina of "normality". It is dangerously seductive to suggest to people who are desperate to end the chaos that if we just silenced the "bad" people things would be okay (leaving unsaid who determines who is bad and what we are allowed to think and say).
- nostromo 6y ago
  I'm not talking about cable news anchors, I'm talking about the New York Times, which is defending Twitter and Facebook censoring the Post.
  - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
    It's really kind of mind boggling really. Does the Times not think they will ever fall afoul of the goodthink, and this weapon will never be used against them?

8note 6y ago

Conspiracy became illegal in the 80s? Threatening people? That seems recent

joe_the_user 6y ago

Speech is considered violence by some people. Some people consider a lot of speech violence but nearly everyone considers a small amount of speech violence or some equivalent. Telling someone to grab a electrified wire is violence by nearly everyone's standard. A mafioso directing a hit man to kill is nearly everyone's standard. The famous "shouting fire in a crowded theater" is mostly violence etc. So you can't say the situation is "free speech or not". The situation is always where the boundary is. Of course, the question of where quickly spreading slander on the eve of an elections is on the spectrum of protected speech is a complicated question. But it's a bit different than the question of whether a given dogma can be challenged.

nemo44x 6y ago
Right when there is a clear and imminent danger has been the judicial limit on speech. I think nearly everyone finds this reasonable. To my point though there is the idea that “silence is violence” which implies if you don’t actively work towards a certain groups objective then you are in fact committing violence. Does this mean that when their social revolution is complete I will hang from the gallows pole because my named social media accounts do not account for me actively promoting their cause? After all my silence on the matter was a hostile act. Maybe I’ll just get a struggle session and be re-educated. Lifelong ban from participating in society but alive at least. If I’m lucky.
- thisiscorrect 6y ago
  "Does this mean that when their social revolution is complete I will hang from the gallows pole because my named social media accounts do not account for me actively promoting their cause?" Yes, it does mean that. They're saying so explicitly.
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    And I think it’s important to highlight as you have. People will say “well they don’t really _mean_ that”, etc. but they should be taken at their word. They do.

montagg 6y ago

There is absolutely speech that is violence, and it is typically not protected by free speech. Harassment, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, calling for literal violence against others, these are allowed to be regulated (in the US) and understood broadly to be dangerous.

lawnchair_larry 6y ago
No, speech is not violence, full stop. It never has been, and it’s a mistake to even tolerate this new definition. Think about it. How can calling for violence be violence? The violence is the violence, the calling for it is incitement. Redefining terms like this is nothing more than subverting the truth to control a narrative.
- montagg 6y ago
  Then you're going against a hundred years of legal thought on free speech there. There's a reason certain speech is not protected, and it's been hashed out. if you have a better legal argument than "it's just not," I'm interested, but it needs to address why previous thinking is incorrect. Edit: a [quick link][1] to all the types of speech in the US that is regulated and why. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United_States#Types_of_speech_restrictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...
  - sethammons 6y ago
    Searched for 'violence' and derivative forms in that wiki link: > limitations on free speech balance rights to free speech and other rights, such as rights for ... protection from imminent or potential violence against particular persons. The speech is not violent. However, we can say that speech that promotes such might not be allowed under "free speech." Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is not violent though it can cause people to panic and cause harm.
  - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
    What does this have to do with what I said? Why do you think I said anything about what is protected? We are arguing about the definition of the word violence.

stolen_biscuit 6y ago

> Speech is considered violence by some people. It has been this way since the late 80's but it was confined to certain subcultures that weren't taken too seriously. But they have taken over certain institutions, like the university (and increasingly big-tech), and own that platform and teach this as esteemed fact rather than an opinion. Who is they?

nemo44x 6y ago
Fair question. The radical left as some name them. But more specifically the activist culture motivated by “critical theory” to dismantle scientific-liberalism and enlightenment principals/philosophy.
- stolen_biscuit 6y ago
  Just to clarify you believe the radical left have infiltrated the upper echelons of capitalist society and academic institutions and have an anti free-speech agenda and have a goal of dismantling enlightenment principals? Can you also explain what you mean by scientific liberalism?
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    “A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. This means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism; it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will.” - Johnathon Rausch 1) no one owns the blessings of what is knowledge by virtue of any sort of implied authority. 2) all accepted knowledge is open to revision upon new evidence or proof This is a good read that articulates this more than I can. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/703086.Kindly_Inquisitors# https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/703086.Kindly_Inquisitor...
  - john_moscow 6y ago
    I think some people have an inherent need to gain influence. To have power over others, tell them what to do. Due to monopolization and centralization, there are fewer and fewer spots to do it in a constructive way (found your own company?). Except if you claim that you're offended, you're suddenly given the right to control what others say. If you claim that you are fighting racism/sexism/etc, you're shielded from 90% of critique. So this "safe haven" has attracted all kinds of opportunists that just enjoy attacking others to feel better about themselves. Look at your typical BLM protestors. It's not Black doctors protesting against being treated differently from White doctors. It's unhappy people from both races that have found an uncriticizable cause to justify their own disappointment in life.